Arming Teachers Isn’t About Making You ‘Feel’ Safer

With the recommendations coming from multiple panels examining the Parkland massacre, armed teachers has become a topic of discussion once again. The idea of teachers having firearms with which to defend their own lives–and, by extension, their students lives as well–makes a great deal of sense if you look at it rationally.

Yet not everyone can do that.

That’s especially true of the Parkland crowd itself.

We don’t expect David Hogg or Emma Gonzalez to support armed teachers. They’re too deep in the pit of “gunz bad!” to look at their shoelaces rationally.

But Cameron Kasky seems to have developed a bit more sense. Despite that, he still felt the need to pen an opinion piece for CNN stating his opposition to armed teachers.

Almost two weeks ago, it seemed that the group advocating for increased safety protocol won one of these battles. A majority of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission recommended that part of the solution to preventing these horrible mass shootings is arming teachers. That’s right, those commissioners believe that putting guns in the hands of Florida’s underpaid guardians of education is the right way to handle these terrifying situations.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, a member of the Marjory Stoneman commission, even said: “In the ideal world, we shouldn’t need anyone on campus with a gun, but that’s not the world we live in today.” He added, “One’s not enough. Two’s not enough. We need multiple people in order to protect the children.”

To be frank, I was shocked that this idea ever became a formalized policy recommendation. As someone who has devoted the weeks and months since tragedy befell my school to gun control efforts and school safety, I can tell you that arming teachers would not make me feel any safer in a classroom setting.

The problem, though, is that it’s not about your feelings. It doesn’t matter whether you feel safer in a classroom or not.

I don’t feel safer bobbing in the ocean with a life preserver if I’m terrified of being eaten by a shark, but I am since I’m far more likely to drown. On the same point, while Kasky tries to make an argument against teachers being armed–ones that fall well short of reality since concealed carriers rarely display any of the problems he claims would suddenly exist inside of a school building–it’s one based on unreasonable fears rather than the world as it exists.

Kasky has been trying to be reasonable, and I applaud him for that. What happened at his high school was horrific and it would be easy for him to slide into the same role as some of his March For Our Lives co-founders have, as anti-gun mouthpieces who have no grasp on the truth. The fact that he’s stepped back from that is commendable.

However, he is still spouting anti-gun propaganda and operating on the idea that feelings should trump facts.

The fact is, concealed carry exists in every state in this country to some degree, and despite that fact, few of the issues he outlines are factors in real-world incidents. Why are the halls of a school a magic place where reality will suddenly shift?

It won’t.

Sorry, Cameron, but your feelings of safety are irrelevant. Students’ actual safety matters, and that means armed teachers there to protect themselves and their students.